Century Swift CNC Bell Mixer
Written by Ashley Davis Friday, 14 April 2006 00:00
Bell MixerThe following is a review of the Century CNC Bell Mixer upgrade. First let's look at some photos of this upgrade item.
Build Quality
As can be seen from the pictures this is a very nice purple anodised bell mixer arm. It has a bearing each side which is a tight and secure fit into the CNC mixer. Assembly is good with smooth lines, a very nice finish and the bearings are very smooth running. All in all nothing to be of concern. The supplied screws and spacer are a perfect fit and there are no rough edges or problems of any kind.
Comparison to the stock part
The stock part is identical except that it is molded plastic rather than CNC aluiminium. The bearings look identical in both the stock and upgrade part. The supplied screws and spacer are also identical.
The main difference is that once the upgrade bell mixer arm is mounted onto the screw there is no binding whatsoever. The stock part does rub slightly on the mounting screws which causes some minor friction and hinderance to totally free movement. Of course this is fixable on the stock item but without work it does not run as freely as the upgrade part.
Build
This part is a very straight forward one for one swap with the stock plastic items. Once the upgrade parts were fitted they very noticeably ran more freely than the stock item. Let's take a look at the mixers once fitted.
Flight Testing
Having fitted the mxer arms I headed to the flying field to test these out. Before I get into the testing it's wprth noting that these mixer arms are identical to the stock part except that they are made from CNC aluminium. Although I knew the upgrade items to be more free running than the stock part I wasn't expecting to notice a dramatic difference. As it turned out there wasn't a dramatic difference, personally I couldn't feel any difference in the machine at all. However, this isn't to say that this upgarde does nothing. Clearly from my bench tests the upgrade parts move more freely and will be smoother in flight but it's not such a noticeable difference as to be immediately apparent in the flight characteristics.
Conclusion
First, it's good to see Century producing some bling parts for the Swift and the current purple colour is certainly very distinctive. Whilst I couldn't 'feel' any difference in flight it was clear on the bench that these bell mixers were smoother running and much more complimentary to the control system than the stndard plastic parts. These are also relatively inexpensive. Not a huge performance based item but a very nice 'bling' addition to the Swift.
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